Bogdanov made his "discovery" in 1906 in the preface to Book III of *Empiriomonism*. "Engels in the *Anti-Dühring*," writes Bogdanov, "expresses himself almost in the sense in which I have just characterized the relativity of truth" (p. V) — that is, in the sense of the denial of any eternal truths, "the denial of the unconditional objectivity of any truth whatsoever." "Engels is wrong in his indecisiveness, in that through all his irony he recognizes some sort of, however pitiful, 'eternal truths'" (p. VIII). "Only inconsistency admits here eclectic reservations, as with Engels…" (p. IX). Let us adduce one example of Bogdanov's refutation of Engelsian eclecticism. "Napoleon died on May 5, 1821," — says Engels in the *Anti-Dühring* (the chapter on "eternal truths"), explaining to Dühring what he must content himself with, what Plattheiten, "platitudes," he must be satisfied with if he pretends to discover eternal truths in the historical sciences. And here is how Bogdanov objects to Engels: "What sort of 'truth' is this? And what is 'eternal' in it? The statement of a singular relation, which perhaps for our generation already has no real significance, cannot serve as a starting point for any activity, leads nowhere" (p. IX). And on p. VIII: "Can 'Plattheiten' be called 'Wahrheiten'? Can 'platitudes' be truths? Truth is a living organizing form of experience; it leads us somewhere in our activity, gives us a point of support in the struggle for life."

From these two citations it is sufficiently clear that instead of refuting Engels, Bogdanov delivers declamation. If you cannot assert that the proposition "Napoleon died on May 5, 1821" is erroneous or inaccurate, then you recognize it as true. If you do not assert that it could be refuted in the future, then you recognize this truth as eternal. To call such phrases as that truth is a "living organizing form of experience" objections — means to palm off a simple collection of words as philosophy. Did the earth have the history that geology expounds, or was the earth created in seven days? Is one really permitted to evade this question with phrases about "living" (what does that mean?) truth, which leads us somewhere, etc.? Is knowledge of the history of the earth and the history of mankind really "without real significance"? Why, this is simply inflated nonsense with which Bogdanov conceals his retreat. For this is indeed a retreat, when he undertook to prove that Engels's admission of eternal truths is eclecticism, and at the same time merely evades the question with noise and clanging of words, leaving unrefuted that Napoleon indeed died on May 5, 1821, and that it is absurd to consider this truth refutable in the future.

The example chosen by Engels is extremely elementary, and anyone can easily think up dozens of similar examples of truths that are eternal, absolute, which it is permissible to doubt only for the insane (as Engels says, citing another such example: "Paris is located in France"). Why does Engels speak here of "platitudes"? Because he is refuting and ridiculing the dogmatic, metaphysical materialist Dühring, who was unable to apply dialectics to the question of the relationship between absolute and relative truth. To be a materialist means to recognize objective truth, disclosed to us by our organs of sense. To recognize objective truth — that is, truth independent of man and of mankind — means in some way or other to recognize absolute truth. This very "in some way or other" is what separates the metaphysical materialist Dühring from the dialectical materialist Engels. Dühring scattered words to the right and to the left on the most complex questions of science in general and of historical science in particular: final, ultimate, eternal truth. Engels ridiculed him: of course — he replied — eternal truths do exist, but it is unwise to use mighty words (gewaltige Worte) concerning simple things. In order to advance materialism forward, one must drop the vulgar game with the word: eternal truth; one must be able to pose and solve the question of the relationship between absolute and relative truth dialectically. This was what the thirty-year-old struggle between Dühring and Engels was about. And Bogdanov, who managed to "fail to notice" the explanation of the question of absolute and relative truth given by Engels in that very same chapter — Bogdanov, who managed to accuse Engels of "eclecticism" for his admission of a position that is ABC for any materialism — Bogdanov has only once again revealed by this his absolute ignorance of both materialism and dialectics.

"We come to the question," writes Engels at the beginning of the indicated chapter (Part I, Chapter IX of the *Anti-Dühring*), "whether the products of human cognition in general, and if so, which, can have sovereign significance and unconditional right (Anspruch) to truth" (p. 79 of the fifth German edition). And Engels resolves this question as follows:

"The sovereignty of thought is realized in a series of people thinking extremely unsovereignly; knowledge having unconditional right to truth — in a series of relative (relative) errors; neither the one nor the other" (neither absolutely true knowledge nor sovereign thought) "can be realized completely otherwise than in the infinite duration of the life of mankind.

We have here again that contradiction with which we have already encountered above, the contradiction between the character of human thought, which presents itself to us by necessity as absolute, and its realization in individual people, thinking only in a limited way. This contradiction can be resolved only in such a series of successive human generations, which, for us at least in practice, is infinite. In this sense human thought is just as sovereign as it is unsovereign, and its faculty of knowledge is just as unlimited as it is limited. Sovereign and unlimited by its nature" (or constitution, Anlage), "by its vocation, possibility, historical ultimate goal; unsovereign and limited by its individual realization, by the reality given at one time or another" (81)[77].

"Precisely the same," Engels continues, "is the case with eternal truths"{45}.

This argument is extremely important for the question of relativism, the principle of the relativity of our knowledge, which all Machists emphasize. The Machists all insist that they are relativists — but the Russian Machists, repeating little words after the Germans, are afraid or unable to pose clearly and directly the question of the relationship of relativism to dialectics. For Bogdanov (as for all Machists), the recognition of the relativity of our knowledge excludes the slightest admission of absolute truth. For Engels, absolute truth is composed of relative truths. Bogdanov is a relativist. Engels is a dialectician. Here is yet another, no less important, argument of Engels from that very same chapter of the *Anti-Dühring*.

"Truth and error, like all logical categories moving in polar opposites, have absolute significance only within an extremely limited domain; we have already seen this, and Mr. Dühring would know it if he were at all acquainted with the rudiments of dialectics, with its first premises, which treat precisely of the insufficiency of all polar opposites. As soon as we begin to apply the opposition of truth and error outside the boundaries of the narrow domain indicated above, this opposition becomes relative (relative) and consequently unfit for precise scientific modes of expression. And if we attempt to apply this opposition outside the limits of the indicated domain as absolute, then we shall utterly fail: both poles of the opposition will each transform into its opposite — that is, truth will become error, error will become truth" (86){46}. An example follows — Boyle's law (the volume of gases is inversely proportional to pressure). The "grain of truth" contained in this law is absolute truth only within certain limits. The law proves to be truth "only approximately."

Thus, human thought by its nature is capable of giving and does give us absolute truth, which is composed of the sum of relative truths. Each stage in the development of science adds new grains to this sum of absolute truth, but the limits of the truth of each scientific proposition are relative, being now expanded, now contracted by the further growth of knowledge. "Absolute truth," says Joseph Dietzgen in his *Excursions*, "we can see, hear, smell, touch, and certainly also know, but it does not enter wholly (geht nicht auf) into knowledge" (p. 195). "It is self-evident that the picture does not exhaust the object, that the artist falls behind his model… How can the picture 'coincide' with the model? Approximately, yes" (197). "We can only relatively (relatively) know nature and its parts; for every part, although it is only a relative part of nature, nonetheless has the nature of the absolute, the nature of the natural whole itself (des Naturganzen an sich), not exhausted by knowledge… Whence then do we know that behind the phenomena of nature, behind relative truths, stands a universal, unlimited, absolute nature, which does not fully reveal itself to man?.. Whence comes this knowledge? It is innate in us. It is given to us together with consciousness" (198). This last point is one of Dietzgen's inaccuracies, which caused Marx in one letter to Kugelmann to note the confusion in Dietzgen's views{47}. Only by clinging to such incorrect passages can one expound a special philosophy of Dietzgen, different from dialectical materialism. But Dietzgen himself corrects himself on that same page: "If I say that knowledge of infinite, absolute truth is innate in us, that it is the sole and only knowledge a priori, yet experience also confirms this innate knowledge" (198).

From all these pronouncements of Engels and Dietzgen it is clear that for dialectical materialism there is no impassable gulf between relative and absolute truth. Bogdanov understood this not at all, since he could write: "it (the world view of old materialism) desires to be unconditionally objective knowledge of the essence of things (Bogdanov's emphasis) and is incompatible with the historical conditionedness of all ideology" (Book III of *Empiriomonism*, p. IV). From the standpoint of contemporary materialism, that is, Marxism, what is historically conditioned are the limits of the approximation of our knowledge to objective, absolute truth, but the existence of this truth is unconditional, and unconditional is the fact that we are approximating ourselves to it. The contours of the picture are historically conditioned, but unconditional is the fact that this picture depicts an objectively existing model. Historically conditioned is when and under what conditions we advanced in our knowledge of the essence of things to the discovery of alizarin in coal tar or to the discovery of electrons in the atom, but unconditional is that each such discovery is a step forward in "unconditionally objective knowledge." In a word, all ideology is historically conditioned, but unconditional is the fact that every scientific ideology (in distinction, for example, from religious ideology) corresponds to an objective truth, to absolute nature. You will say: this distinction between relative and absolute truth is indefinite. I answer you: it is precisely so "indefinite" as to prevent the transformation of science into dogma in the bad sense of the word, into something dead, frozen, ossified, but it is at the same time precisely so "definite" as to mark itself off in the most decisive and irrevocable manner from fideism and from agnosticism, from philosophical idealism and from the sophistry of the followers of Hume and Kant. Here is a line that you did not notice, and, not noticing it, you slid into the swamp of reactionary philosophy. This is the line between dialectical materialism and relativism.

We are relativists, proclaim Mach, Avenarius, Petzoldt. We are relativists, echo them Mr. Chernov and several Russian Machists desirous of being Marxists. Yes, Mr. Chernov and fellow Machists, therein lies your error. For to place relativism at the foundation of the theory of knowledge means inevitably to condemn oneself either to absolute skepticism, agnosticism, and sophistry, or to subjectivism. Relativism, as the foundation of the theory of knowledge, is not only the recognition of the relativity of our knowledge, but also the denial of any objective, existing independently of mankind, measure or model toward which our relative knowledge approaches. From the standpoint of bare relativism one can justify any sophistry, one can recognize as "conditional" whether Napoleon died on May 5, 1821 or not, one can declare by simple "convenience" for man or for mankind the admission alongside scientific ideology ("convenient" in one respect) of religious ideology (very "convenient" in another respect), etc.

Dialectics — as Hegel already explained — includes within itself the moment of relativism, negation, skepticism, but is not reducible to relativism. The materialist dialectics of Marx and Engels unconditionally includes within itself relativism, but is not reducible to it, that is, it recognizes the relativity of all our knowledge not in the sense of the denial of objective truth, but in the sense of the historical conditionedness of the limits of the approximation of our knowledge to this truth.

Bogdanov writes in italics: "Consistent Marxism does not admit such dogmatism and such statics as eternal truths" (*Empiriomonism*, Book III, p. IX). This is confusion. If the world is eternally moving and developing matter (as Marxists think), which is reflected in developing human consciousness, then where does "statics" come in? The question is not at all about the unchanging essence of things and not about unchanging consciousness, but about the correspondence between consciousness reflecting nature and nature reflected in consciousness. On this question — and only on this — the term "dogmatism" has a special characteristic philosophical flavor: it is a favorite little word of idealists and agnostics against materialists, as we have already seen from the example of the rather "old" materialist Feuerbach. Old, ancient rubbish — that is what all the objections against materialism made from the standpoint of the so-called "newest positivism" turn out to be.